This invention relates to a service providing apparatus and method, and an information processing apparatus and method as well as a program storage medium, and more particularly to a service providing apparatus and method, and an information processing apparatus and method as well as a program storage medium by which the same program data can be reproduced simultaneously by a plurality of users making use of, for example, a chat system.
A chat system is available as a service provided by the Internet. In the chat system, text data transmitted from a certain client who logs in a server are received by the server once and then transmitted to other clients who log in the server. Consequently, a plurality of users who are at remote places can communicate readily with each other.
However, the conventional chat system permits a plurality of users to share only texts (characters) inputted by the individual users and thus has a subject to be solved in that it provides poorer presence than where a plurality of users gather and communicate with each other in a room in a real space.